President Richard Nixon appeared in the Texas locker room after Texas’ 15-14 victory over Arkansas in 1969. The season was the 100th for college football, and the Texas-Arkansas game was moved to the final game of the season by ABC to cap the Centennial year. Both teams were unbeatend and ranked Nos. 1 and 2 (Texas was No. 1). Nixon presented a plaque to the winner as the national champion. Also pictured is Texas coach Darrell Royal, left of Nixon.

Then-President Richard M. Nixon, second row, second from left, watches "The Big Shootout" football game between Arkansas and Texas in the stands at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Ark., in this December 6, 1969 file photo. Seated beside Nixon from left are Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, R-Ark., Ark. Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, Sen. John L. McClellan, D-Ark., Sen. J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., Rep. George H. Bush, R-Tex., and on the first row, left, University of Arkansas President David W. Mullins. Then ranked No. 1 Texas won the game and the national championship by defeating No. 2 Arkansas 15-14.

University of Arkansas receiver Chuck Dicus makes a reception against Texas on Dec. 6, 1969, in Fayetteville, Ark. Several former Arkansas football players who took part in the school's most storied game say they are surprised and disappointed that the university canceled plans to commemorate the game's anniversary.

Texas running back Jim Bertelsen scores the game-tying touchdown en route to a 15-14 victory Arkansas in 1969 in Fayetteville, Ark. Center Forrest Weigand (52) and tight end Randy Peschel (40) celebrate the TD, which tied the game at 14-14 and set the stage for Happy Feller’s game-winning extra point in the final four minutes of the game.

Texas quarterback James Street found himself backstage at the Las Vegas Hilton stuck in the middle of an argument on a late night in January 1970.

Street had come to Las Vegas for a few days between semesters hoping to get away from the pandemonium surrounding the Longhorns’ recent national championship. But not even in the neon desert could Street find refuge.

Top-ranked Texas had been declared national champions by President Richard M. Nixon after the Longhorns’ come-from-behind 15-14 victory against No. 2 Arkansas Dec. 6 in what was billed as the Big Shootout, a game that captured the nation’s attention and became a seminal moment in the sport’s history.

If the president had his opinion, then so did the King.

So here was Street, escorted backstage by Colonel Tom Parker to meet Elvis Presley, only to find Elvis and the Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley still debating the Big Shootout. Medley maintained Arkansas should have won. Elvis shook his head no. Texas was the better team.

Even now, as No. 2 Texas prepares to play top-ranked USC in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 4 in another national title game, the 1969 Longhorns, the sport’s last all-white national championship team, and the Big Shootout remain the subjects of heated debate.

At a time when 58 million U.S. households had television sets, Elvis and 50 million fans – roughly one in every four Americans – watched ABC’s telecast of what the network and the media hyped as the Game of the Century. Nearly 40 years later, a contest turned on a pair of gambles by Longhorns coach Darrell Royal remains on a short list of games with legitimate claims to such a lofty title.

“It’s still one of the biggest games in college football history,” said Dr. Ted Koy, a halfback on the Texas team and a man not given to bragging.

The victory kept alive a Texas winning streak that would eventually stretch to 30 games and include not only the 1969 national championship, the school’s last consensus title, but a share of the 1970 crown as well.

Others see no reason to celebrate a game and two teams that, 22 years after Jackie Robinson integrated major-league baseball, still did not have a single black varsity player.

“It’s hard to decide how we should come at it,” said Peter Roby, director of the Northeastern Center for the Study of Sport in Society. “You’re recollecting a legacy but it’s not a legacy that a lot of people of color – that people striving for social justice – want to remember.”

In a way, both sides are right. Played against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, the Big Shootout four decades later continues to define the era it was played in.

“When I look back on that game and that Texas team, it’s like climbing a mountain and getting to the mountain top and looking back at everything below,” said Jerry Levias, the Southern Methodist All-America receiver who broke the Southwest Conference’s color barrier. “And see how most of the University of Texas’ players are black. I see that they have a black quarterback. And I see where we started and I just think to myself ‘my, my, my, oh, my, it’s been a long climb.'”

ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

College football recognized its 100th anniversary in 1969 and ABC wanted to celebrate the occasion with a special season finale. ABC publicist Beano Cook reasoned if Southwest Conference rivals Texas and Arkansas would move their Oct. 18 game in Fayetteville, Ark., to Dec. 6, there was a strong chance both teams still would be undefeated.

So ABC Sports executive Roone Arledge persuaded Arkansas coach Frank Broyles to move the game with the promise that President Nixon would attend and that the network would televise Arkansas in 1970 season opener. Royal, tired of playing Oklahoma and Arkansas on consecutive weeks, agreed to the switch. Broyles even talked Arkansas officials into installing AstroTurf, then still a novelty, at Razorback Stadium.

Cook’s hunch was right. Arkansas entered December 9-0 and was coming off a 33-0 victory against Texas Tech. Texas, powered by its triple-option, Wishbone offense (installed a year earlier), was riding a 18-game winning streak. Junior All-America fullback Steve Worster anchored a Longhorns backfield that was averaging a nation-leading 376 yards per game rushing. Worster and halfbacks Jim Bertelsen and Koy were all averaging more than 5 yards per carry. The Longhorns averaged 50 points a game in the five games leading up to the Arkansas showdown.

The inspirational leader of a Texas defense, which was giving up just 9.8 points per game, was an undersized junior safety named Freddie Steinmark.

“Everybody loved Freddie,” Worster said.

For weeks, Steinmark had been losing weight and experiencing severe pain in his left leg. Complaining that he was out of shape, he asked secondary coach Fred Akers if he could do extra drills the week of the Arkansas game.

On Monday, Steinmark, like most of his teammates, had another concern: the draft. A week earlier, Nixon signed legislation creating the first draft lottery since World War II. That night several Longhorns watched the nationally televised lottery in which, one-by-one, 366 capsules containing birthdays were drawn. The lower your number, the greater your chances of getting drafted.

“I had lucky 13,” Worster recalled. “And that scared the dog out of me because the last thing I wanted to do was go to Vietnam and die. That was a major topic that week. A major concern.”

An estimated 12,000 had marched on the state capitol, just south of the Texas campus, in mid-October. But the first week of December, Austin, like much of the country, was consumed with the Arkansas game. A crowd of nearly 35,000 showed up for a Thursday night pep rally. The next day, 66 Longhorns players, all of them white, boarded a plane to Arkansas for what Royal, known for his down-home phrases, called the Big Shootout.

SLOW TURNING

Royal coached blacks at both the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League and the University of Washington. Texas players said he did not tolerate racial slurs.

“To this day I don’t believe that he’s ever let color influence any decision he’s made,” Randy Peschel, a tight end on the 1969 team, said of Royal.

But in the 1950s and 1960s Royal wasn’t making the major decisions in Austin.

“Football coaches,” Royal said “don’t decide when you integrate.”

A black player had a leading role in the Longhorns program’s early days. “Doc” Henry Reeves, the son of freed Tennessee slaves, served as Texas’ trainer and masseuse from 1894 until he suffered a stroke during halftime of a 1915 game at Texas A&M. He died two months later. While some Texas students referred to the Longhorns as “Henry’s team,” Reeves couldn’t eat with the players he treated much less attend the same university.

Five blacks finally were admitted to the University of Texas law school in 1950 after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an NAACP discrimination lawsuit against the school. Black undergraduates were first admitted in 1956. Campus dorms were integrated in 1964. Integrating the Longhorns football team would take even longer.

USC running back C.R. Roberts, who was black, ran for a Memorial Stadium record 251 yards in a 44-20 victory against Texas in 1956. A year later Prentice Gautt became the first black varsity player at Oklahoma, Royal’s alma mater. But the Texas program, like the rest of the Southwest Conference, remained all-white through the mid-1960s.

“That it was all white was not the design of the team and Coach Royal,” said Julius Whittier, Texas’ first black letterman. “It had a lot more to do with the picture of the university the alums and the leadership of the university had for it. And they were going to hold out and play only white boys for as long as they could.”

That was fine with rival recruiters. Texan Mel Farr was an All-American halfback at UCLA. Texans Bubba Smith and Gene Washington were All-Americans on Michigan State’s 1966 national championship team. In fact, Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty had grown downright possessive about the Lone Star State.

“We didn’t think a lot about it,” Worster said, referring to Texas’ all-white roster. “We didn’t think about it at all to tell you the truth. We did notice that with a lot of the teams we played, the majority of their stud muffins were black.”

A new group of Texas regents also noticed the talent drain out of the state.

“The regents changed,” Royal said. “So did the policy. It seems like now all those decisions were so obvious in regards to what is the right thing to do. But we were slow to catch on in that part of the country.”

Levias at SMU became the Southwest Conference’s first black varsity player in 1966. A year later Royal offered Don Baylor, a standout at an Austin high school, a scholarship. In 1962, Baylor was one of three blacks at Austin’s first integrated junior high. But Baylor decided to pursue a baseball career.

Running back Leon O’Neal entered Texas in the fall of 1968 but transferred the following spring. Whittier, a linebacker/offensive tackle, enrolled a few months later and stayed.

“They acted like it wasn’t a big deal,” Whittier, now a prominent Dallas attorney, said of his teammates reaction to his breaking the color barrier at Texas. But he also said a Longhorns assistant coach told him years later that only one white teammate – halfback Billy Dale – volunteered to be his roommate when he joined the varsity in 1970.

In 1969, NCAA rules prohibited freshmen from playing varsity football, so on the first Saturday afternoon in December, Whittier sat down on the floor of a television lounge of a women’s dorm as the nation tuned into the Big Shootout.

GAMBLING DARRELL

Shortly after arriving in Arkansas that Friday, Royal noticed a sign in front of a church: “Darrell Royal, Cast not thy steers before swine.”

“I had hoped God would be neutral,” Royal cracked.

Nixon and an entourage that included Sen. William J. Fulbright, an Arkansas Democrat and leading opponent to the Vietnam War, and future president George H.W. Bush, then a Texas congressman, arrived in Fayetteville in a cold, dreary mix of rain and sleet.

“But nobody seemed to notice,” Akers said of the weather.

Nixon and a group of anti-war protestors on a hillside next to the stadium watched Arkansas lead, 14-0, through three quarters. But on the first play of the fourth quarter, Street dropped back to pass, then unable to find an open receiver, scrambled 42 yards for a touchdown. On the bus ride to the game Royal, determined to avoid a tie, surprised Street with his plan to go for the two-point conversion after Texas’ first touchdown. Just as Royal planned, Street dove into end zone off left guard on the point-after to make it 14-8.

Texas still trailed, facing fourth-and-3 from its own 43 with 4:47 remaining when Royal called time out. Royal was only half-joking when he said, “only three things can happen when you pass and two of them are bad.” But feeling the game and the national title slipping away, he decided to roll the dice a second time.

“I didn’t pick up anything,” Royal said. “I looked at the clock and we’re behind, we weren’t moving the ball. We had been confused with their defensive (scheme) all day. I just felt it was time to gamble.”

“Right 53 Veer pass,” Royal shouted at Street. The play was a deep pattern throw to the tight end. The play wasn’t in the Texas game plan package.

“Are you sure that’s the call you want?” Street said.

“Damn right I’m sure!” Royal snapped.

As Royal’s assistants continued to argue against the call, Street returned to the huddle, where the play received a similar reaction.

“‘Is he out of his (expletive) mind?’ Is what we were thinking,” recalled Worster, who had 94 yards on 25 carries.

Tight end Randy Peschel broke down the sideline, then panicked when he looked back for the ball.

“I thought I’m never going to catch it, that it’s way over my head,” Peschel said. “I kept running and then I saw two pairs of (defenders) hands and the ball just kind of dropped over their finger tips. It was a perfect throw.”

“What convinced me that Texas deserves that is the fact that you won a tough one,” Nixon said in the Longhorn locker room handing Royal a presidential national championships plaque – forgetting about undefeated Penn State in the process “For a team to be behind 14-0 and then not to lose its cool and go on to win, that proves you deserve to be No. 1 and that’s what you are!”

Texas radio personality Cactus Pryor turned to a friend and said “President Nixon just proclaimed Texas No. 1 and the state of Pennsylvania Democrat.”

Penn State coach Joe Paterno never forgot the slight.

“How could President Nixon know so much about college football in 1969, and so little about Watergate in 1983,” Paterno said in a 2003 interview.

The following Tuesday, Steinmark decided to get his left leg X-rayed. The exam revealed a large tumor near his hip. Steinmark had bone cancer. Three days later his left leg was amputated.

“It was devastating,” Worster said. “It really made us question everything. How could God make that move? It really threw us into a tailspin, confused a lot of us. I questioned it a lot. It just made no sense.”

Texas recovered to beat Notre Dame, 21-17, in the Cotton Bowl. Royal gave Steinmark the game ball. Steinmark died in June 1971.

It would be another 10 years before the historical significance of the Longhorns national championship would sink in.

“I guess we never realized or thought about it,” Peschel said. “But you’d hear that we were the last all-white team to win and you’d think for a moment and then think ‘Hey, that’s right.’ All you have to do is look at our team picture.”

COME A LONG WAY

On Jan. 4, Julius Whittier will again be parked in front of a television set to watch the Longhorns play for the national title.

“To me, this game is just as important to the program as the (Big Shootout),” Whittier said. “Because it completes the experiment of the black athlete at the University of Texas. For years people couldn’t handle the idea of the black athlete at Texas, and now we have a black quarterback. Texas is playing for the national championship again and (All-American quarterback) Vince Young is carrying the torch. And nobody is complaining.”

Scott M. Reid is a sports enterprise/investigative reporter for the Orange County Register. He also covers Olympic and international sports as well as the Los Angeles’ bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games. His work for the Register has led to investigations by the International Olympic Committee, the U.S. Department of Education, the California Legislature, and the national governing bodies for gymnastics and swimming. Reid's 2011 reporting on wide spread sexual abuse within USA Gymnastics and the governing body's failure to effectively address it led to Don Peters, coach of the 1984 record-setting Olympic team, being banned from the sport for life. His reporting also prompted USA Gymnastics to adopt new guidelines and policies dealing with sexual abuse. Reid's 2012 and 2013 reporting on sexual abuse within USA Swimming led to the banishment of two top level coaches. Reid has won 11 Associated Press Sports Editors awards for investigative reporting since 1999. He has also been honored by APSE for game writing, and enterprise, news, and beat reporting. He was an Investigative Reporters and Editors award finalist in 2002 and 2003. Prior to joining the Register in 1996, Reid worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Dallas Times Herald. He has a B.A. in the History of the Americas from the University of Washington.

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